This essay examines E. Pauline Johnson's short story "As It Was in the Beginning," focusing on how the protagonist Esther experiences cultural assimilation and gendered oppression at a mission school. Through close reading, the paper argues that while Johnson presents Native American cultural displacement as central, the emotional and relational dimensions of Esther's suffering—particularly her treatment as a woman and romantic rejection—emerge as equally if not more significant. The essay contextualizes the story's critique of religious hypocrisy by drawing on the author's firsthand experience as a dorm parent at an international Christian boarding school, demonstrating parallels between historical and contemporary institutional practices of cultural conformity.
The short story "As It Was in the Beginning" by E. Pauline Johnson presents a tale from both a woman's and an Indigenous perspective. Johnson tells the story in a manner that captures the fright and frustration Esther endured in a "mission" school designed to change her life completely. In the story, Esther faced many cultural issues, but more importantly, she faced her womanhood. At the beginning, she is frightened and frustrated, but she soon learns that what she has to say may make a difference in the life of the next Indigenous girl sent to such a foreign place. While the story is told more from the standpoint of a "Redskin" than that of a woman, Johnson makes it very clear that Esther's anger and frustration as a woman regarding her treatment are seemingly more intrusive and important than her cultural issues.
In "As It Was in the Beginning," Johnson gives a glimpse of the horrible injustice the Native American people endured and the oppression of their lives in the name of religion. At the story's outset, Esther, her mother, and her father were all engaged in the care and practices that Native Americans did. Mother sat quietly at work with quills (Johnson 7), father sat in the tepee polishing buffalo horns (Johnson 3), and Esther sat listening to the old white-haired man she only knew as "Blackcoat." Native people called him "Blackcoat" based on his clothing; he wore a long black coat and carried a black leather book (Johnson 3).
Blackcoat came wanting to take Esther to a "mission" school to teach her of God and heaven. He made it clear that taking Esther would make her into a noble woman and that she would perhaps bring "her people" to Christ (Johnson 9). Father gave in against mother's dismay. Esther was taken to the "mission" school where she was made to dress like the white man, speak like the white man, and learn about God and what God had to offer. There at the school, Esther fell in love with Blackcoat's "adopted son," Laurence, but she clearly learned that the white man and the Indian cannot mix in that respect.
Blackcoat was adamant that this union could never be. Esther listened and, shocked as it may sound, thought to herself how those words could ever be uttered by someone she revered as a saint. In a split second, all her respect was gone. How could her "white" father, who pretended to care for her, take away everything she dreamed of in response to her red skin? In that moment, she hated that father and his hell. She hated his long white hair, white hands, and the very atmosphere of him (Johnson 5).
As Esther became overcome with hatred of the white man, she dreamt of the white man's hell, only to engulf herself in the white man's hell. Esther was robbed of her native faith, her parents, the love that would have made her a great woman, and the only life she knew (Johnson 6). The oppression in this story is subtle; Father Paul is never outright cruel to Esther, but it is there nonetheless.
Johnson uses irony and religious symbolism to show the reader the hypocrisy of Father Paul regarding the Native people. Father Paul pities Esther rather than loving her as he says he does. Esther seems to be a project of choice where he can mold her into a nice, Christian girl, but she is still considered an outcast. This outcast status comes to light when Laurence and Esther fall in love. Father Paul makes it clear to Laurence that she will never measure up to the white man's standards. Father Paul imposes his prejudices upon Laurence and makes it clear that she will forever be "one of them"—evil, pagan, Indians (Johnson 5). There is no regard for her feelings in his presentation. Father Paul does not even regard her as a person, much less a woman with thoughts and feelings.
This teaching is profoundly ironic in that Father Paul, who teaches love and acceptance, does not practice what he preaches. He claims to want Esther's spiritual improvement yet denies her the possibility of human connection and romantic love. His selective application of Christian values—teaching salvation while withholding dignity—exposes the missionary project as fundamentally colonial and extractive rather than genuinely compassionate.
"Author's firsthand observation of similar assimilation practices"
E. Pauline Johnson showed that religion was used as a way to introduce native children to the idea of Hell, and like with everything else in the white man's society where ideas are used as threats, Hell was used as a threat. This threat was meant to have control. In fact, true Christians who teach of God's love teach that Hell is real, but there is always forgiveness if one places themselves with God. In the white man's society, if ideas were presented as Christian ideas and not scare tactics, do you think the white man's relationship with the native families might have been a bit friendlier? Johnson's final irony lies in this question: the religious language of salvation became the language of coercion, transforming what should have been a message of love into a weapon of cultural conquest.
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